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The Customer is Not Always Right

by Tracy, Richmond Hill, ON, Canada, Age 17

Not to cause a fuss or anything, but I am absolutely sick of people who think they are the most important living beings on the planet and that my feelings – my nameless-fast-food-worker girl feelings – are minuscule enough to stamp all over with made-in-a-sweat-shop-by-a-dying-Indonesian-kid boots bought on a CEO’s salary. No, I am not the chopped liver I am about to revengefully slip into your Country Style Breakfast Bagel. No, I won’t let someone I’ve never met chew me up and only spit me back out to finish stirring five and a quarter sugars into his or her coffee. And no, I am not about to go out of my busy way to pour your pretty face a free cup of water when you weren’t even in line – unless you tip me. That’s not even the beginning of the daily treatment I receive at work. Allow me to clarify.

So as soon as I get through the door to my Country Style/Yogen Fruz joint, decked out in my pre-owned, bleach-stained uniform, the visual evidence of my maturity and private school education seem to disappear. The customers treat me (and my manager pays me) like I was a twelve-year-old slacker with short-term memory. For example, let’s take Specimen A: The Pervert Who Thinks He’s Better Than Me.

He commences to say, “Yeah so, get me a double-double – err…that’s a coffee with T-W-O C-R-E-A-M-S, T-W-O S-U-G-A-R-S. Sure you got that, sweetheart?” All I can do is bite down on the streamline of swear words that so desperately want to escape from my mouth and slap him on his wrinkly, arrogant, high-school-drop-out face. Wouldn’t you think that someone who works with coffee would at least know what a double-double is? And, tell me, who gives these people the right to call me ‘sweetheart’? The wordless fast-food-worker-girl may seem stupid and naïve, but no, mister, no she’s not – she’s speeding right by your incompetent rust bucket in her Badmobile on the Highway of Success.

I robotically mix the disgusting concoction of rainforest destruction, animal cruelty, and future landfill pollution and hand it to Specimen A without touching his grimy fingers. That’s one down – too many more to go.

As long as there are fast food chains, there will always be underpaid and overworked line staff. And as long as there are underpaid and overworked line staff, there will always be harassment from rude, ungrateful customers whose minds are closed off to the elements of the world that don’t affect them personally. Let us take a close look at Specimen B: The Bacteriophobic Nit Pick Who Is Out To Get Me. She walks up to the stand, bangs her twoonie on the counter to get my attention, and proceeds with her order.

“I want a Strawberry Banana Sensation Smoothy.” Only Specimen B will use the corporate names for the products. “But it needs to be made with a non-fat Yogen Fruz bar, you have to wear un-used gloves when you prepare it, and I want to see you wash the yogurt machine and sanitize the blender beforehand.” Just smile and nod, Tracy – resist the temptation to tell her to shove the blender up her you-know-where.

I’ve had to become an expert at staying calm under such conditions – no matter how many times Specimen B yells at me to use a new cup when the initial one falls on the floor or to put the yogurt through the machine again when it comes out not looking like the perfect example in the picture. It is very annoying that some “people” will treat fast food workers like the slaves of the fleas on a dog. I’m human, just like they are; therefore I deserve a little respect. Get with the times, customers! The whole “equal rights thing” is no longer an idea in the making – it applies to me as much as I accept that it applies to you.

Specimen B walks away without saying “thank-you” after distrustfully counting her change. I smile and tell her to have a nice day…for karma purposes only.

There are many different types of Customer Specimens, but the last one I am going to detail for my ranting pleasure is Specimen C: The Complaining Cheapskate Who Doesn’t End Up Buying Anything. He stands back from the counter, looking up at the menu, trying to decide what he wants. He asks me how much a small coffee would be including tax. After I tell him, he launches off on a rampage – lecturing me about how coffee was only a few cents back in the good ol’ days and how it’s putting holes in his pockets now. I apologize dryly even though I didn’t do a thing.

Specimen C continues to hold up the line of the other impatient, it’s-all-about-me customers until finally the words “get me a kiddie-scoop of vanilla” seep from his creased, bitter lips. I swear under my breath. The vanilla ice cream is so far past its “best before” date that it is almost impossible to get the spoon into the stiff stuff to scoop it out. Notice how managers at fast food places care more about costs than quality. They don’t replace outdated products – they just wait until some unsuspecting sucker buys the old stuff that would’ve otherwise gone straight to the garbage. Who am I but a mere line staff to protest? I finally pack together a sad attempt at Specimen C’s vanilla kiddie-scoop – it barely meets the portion size, but I did the best I could considering what I had to work with and if it were any bigger, the geezer might get some serious food poisoning. We wouldn’t want that to happen.

“That’s $1.35, sir.” He’s off on another rampage. I tell him to write a letter to the CEO of Yogen Fruz because he’s the one in charge of the prices, not me. He continues the second rampage with a bonus insult to my imperfect scooping abilities. I don’t bother explaining myself to the unfeeling mind of Specimen C – a mind that’s far past its own “best before” date. He leaves the kiddie scoop on the counter and walks off – all that commotion for nothing.

You know, sometimes I wonder why I stick with my job. It makes my feet ache, it covers my clothes in yogurt, it gives my hands coffee burns, and it deprives me of time for social activities – all for an illegally modest paycheck. But the worst part about food service work is the customers – the exhausting customers who don’t realize that the youth are the leaders of the future. I could be the woman at the senior home who deals out their life-prolonging pills, for all they know. In short, customers everywhere should think twice before making rude remarks to, or ridiculous requests of a fast food employee. Keep in mind that I am busy. You are not the only customer I have to serve. I am quite confident that I am more intelligible than you. It doesn’t matter if your food doesn’t look perfect because you’re going to wolf it back anyway. The indifferent look on my face is only there because people like you are being unkind to me and I can’t fight back.

So please, when you get the itching for some manufactured, edible chemicals from any of the local quick ‘n’ caloric joints, try to hold back the urge to piss off the employees – it just might come back to bite you in the butt one day.